They are very aware of how they are speaking, and in person, they are the most precise people you will ever meet. I recently had occasion to speak with a patent attorney, and not only did he explain the patent in plain English, but I was floored at how unambiguous he was. We spoke over the phone and he was able to guide several people through the details of the patent quickly and clearly.
I do agree though, the way these are written is almost completely unreadable. Almost like how we use English words in programming languages, but without the domain knowledge, it is meaningless.
Ptents in theory are meant to blanace a public bad (a monopoly) with a public good (teaching practitioners how to do something). I am a programmer, and I do not understand software patents. I'm sure I'm not the oonly one. If a typical practitioner of an art, when seeing a patent, says its hard to understand or confusingly worded, the patent should be void.
I think there's a good argument for that approach being applied to the description of the patent. That's the part that a person skilled in the art should be able to use to make the invention.
However, it's not so applicable to the claims of the patent. This part is for lawyers to use to determine the exact extent of the legal protection conferred by the patent. The description is of just one embodiment of the invention; it is natural that slight variations from that embodiment should also be covered - but exactly how much variation is covered? How general (or how abstract) is the coverage? Especially when you consider that the given embodiment isn't necessarily the "center" of the inventions - it is not the embodiment, just an embodiment. This extent is difficult to specify, and special language is needed.
To use jordyhoyt's analogy, it would be like expecting Erlang to be readable by a layman. Of course, we can do better. The point is that it's hard to serve many masters.
> To use jordyhoyt's analogy, it would be like expecting Erlang to be readable by a layman.
If lawyerese for a formally-defined language with a compiler and everything, I'd have less problems with it. But from whetre I'm standing, it just looks like obfuscated English.
I don't think the problem is that they are unreadable, it's that while your patent attorney friend can provide a clear explanation of the patent on narrow grounds and get it approved, some other attorney can come along a year later and file a suit based on a much looser interpretation. So a patent is dual-natured: it's strictly interpreted at approval, and loosely interpreted while enforced.
I do agree though, the way these are written is almost completely unreadable. Almost like how we use English words in programming languages, but without the domain knowledge, it is meaningless.